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11.7.2013

I am attempting a different approach to reviewing. The review of this bluray Tristan und Isolde will come first,then details about how this opera came into being,with an insight into what the libretto is really about;a mystery to many.Live from Deutsche oper Berlin's opera tour to Japan,Tokyo 1993. Recorded live at the NHK Hall,Tokyo,24th and 29th September 1993.The booklet has the track numbers next to all the pieces,an article on Wagner's life,also,a synopsis of the opera.The set designer is Gunther Schneider-Siemssen and the stage director Gotz Friedrich.It is traditional in costume and Staging.Act 1 is set on the deck of a ship with the rigging shown and is in darkness,as is part of Act 2 taking place in a Garden,which lights up when King Mark appears.Act 3,battlements of a castle,with a light yellow sun overhead. Jiri Kout is the conductor of the orchestra of the Deutsche oper Berlin,whose tempo's are just right;fast when required to create tension,slower to bring out the lovely melodies. Rene Kollo is older,but his singing and experience brings to life Tristan,epecially when he is dying in Act 3.Hanna Schwarz,Mezzo, is Brangane, as ideal as she was in the first,Ponnelle,Barenboim version recorded in 1983. Gwyneth Jones voice has changed slightly from the Chereau Ring,where she was Brunnhilde.She is older now. But none of that matters for the singing is amazing, and that is all that counts.Robert Lloyd makes an excellent King Mark. The other parts are well taken.How does this recording compare to other DVDs and Bluray's? The 1983 first Barenboim cond Bayreuth orch,has Rene Kollo,Johanna Meier,Hanna Schwarz,designed by Ponnelle,and is renowned for the changing colours of the tree.Is beloved by many.Should be in Bluray. The 2nd 1995 Barenboim Tristan and Isolde,has Jerusalem and Waltraud Meier, whose singing is beyond beautiful.The bluray Glyndebourne has Stemme,who is a singer for the ages, Gambill and Pape.Lehnhoff scenery captures the metaphysical symbols in this opera.The Bayreuth Bluray 2009 live edition,cond Schneider,with Dean Smith and Irene Theorin,with modern staging,has a different agenda. All excellent; the latest rendition of this opera joins that company,so good is it.PCM Stereo. DTS-HD master Audio 5.1. Region Worldwide. 1080i HD. Subtitles: German. English.French.Italian. Spanish and Korean.Bluray is good so is the sound.The legend of Tristan and Isolde originated in the Celtic regions of Wales,or S.E England,then passed on to Brittany,France.Wagner first encounted Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan(1215) in the 1840's in a modern German version.The Medieval text's unusual subject of fated and enchanted,as opposed to courtly,love that leads to destruction and eternal death,which was seen as too racy for many German's in the 19th century.After reading it,Wagner changed the story a great deal when writing the libretto.In 1854 Wagner wrote a letter to Lizst stating that he wished to produce Tristan and Isolde in 1858.At about this time he came across the German Philosopher Schopenhauer(1788-1860),who wrote "the World as will and idea" and published in 1819,but never caught on until a Englishman wrote about it in the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly review of April 1853.After reading the book,Wagner was never the same again,he thought he was a Schopenhaurian without knowing it.According to Magee" this philosophy enabled Wagner to find himself on every level.Without this philosopher he could not have written Tristan and Isolde or Parsival."Wagner arrived in Switzerland,27th May 1849, after being part of the uprising in Dresden.Eventually,his patron was Otto Wesendonck,a rich silk Merchant,who made available a small house adjoining his luxury villa Zurich,28th April 1857. Wagner then fell in love with Mathilde Wesendonck and had an affair with her;out of this came the five Wesendonck songs set to Mathilde poems. Much has been made of this affair,although Mathilde would not have left Otto as she had two children. In fact,Millington goes on to state that the relationship "remained unconsummated.The fact that Wagner's rampant passion for Mathilde supplied a kind of emotional matrix for the sexual yearning in Tristan and Isolde-is further evidence of a sort".According to Newman in Wagner nights"the music of Tristan was already imposing its will on him well before he came across Mathilde. Mathilde was not the cause of the work,but merely a spark which unleashed the volcano within which had been brewing since 1854".In August 1857 Wagner began the prose sketch for Tristan-some ten days after he had finished the composition of Act two of Siegfried.Act 1 was completed in 1858,then Wagner left for Venice(Act 2),because Minna his wife had found a letter from him to Mathilde.The marriage was not in a happy state, so Minna left for a spa. The opera was completed in Lucerne 1859. The Premiere was held at the National theatre,Munich 1865.A 20 year old married woman Princess Sophie, was not allowed to go to the premiere,because of the explicit sex act set to music. Clara Schumann thought the opera was filthy.The opening chord of the opera was the beginning of modern Classical music.Actually,Wagner wanted to write a simple opera for money,and then he forgot the public and wrote for himself.Magee writes"that serious writers on music would not have a special interest in Philosophy.Why would they.So often Schopenhauer is downplayed,not explained properly,or ignored where his influence on Wagner is concerned".One has to understand that Wagner and the philosopher grew up in a different culture to ours.So we should at least attempt to understand what Wagner meant and what the Libretto of Tristan and Isolde is about.For example,the great love duet has a precise meaning and is not meaningless rubbish.For Wagner was the only composer to understand philosophy,especially Schopenhauer.He was not simply a composer.Schopenhauer thought life was tragic. Existence is a miserable business and it would be better if none of us had been born. The world of Nature is no better;animals are being torn to pieces alive.Suicide is no way out,that would increase the amount of pain in the world. The only way out is turn our backs on life by disengagement,non attachment,the denial of the will.The reason the negativity happens is the noumenal is a blind,purposeless force entirely unconcerned with anything to do with life or living creatures.Its manifestation in the physical world is the dumb urge to existence. Since the noumenal of which we are the phenomenal(physical) embodiment is unknowable, it is called will by the philosopher. Will needs to be overcome to disengage from the World.It is not given to us to be mystics states Schopenhauer,for they say these insights cannot be communicated,however,we can experience this briefly through Sex and Art,especially the Art of music. In a loving sexual relationship,the individual loses their sense of self and both disolve into a brief mystical state.What he, Schopenhauer is refering to, is the orgasm,which he considers a quasi-mystical experience that carries us to the very center of life's mystery,which the philosopher wrote about in a note book.He was the first person to accept that we were sexual beings, and how it affects our personality,aeons before Freud thought of it. Music, Schopenhauer states,is the voice of the metaphysical will,(unknowable) which does manifest itself in the phenomenal(physical) World. The composer reveals the inner most nature of the World, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand.Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to acknowledge that he was a atheist.But he did not dismiss religion;he thought Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity brought to us,some of the profoundest truths that are wrapped up in fictional stories. Schopenhauer was amazed by the fact that in his book"the World as will and idea", he had come to the same conclusion as writings thousands of years old,from cultures totally different to ours.When the philosopher was introduced to Eastern belief systems,he dabbled in reincarnation,but showed an interest in Buddhism and Hinduism,especially the Upanishads.But after his reading of Schopenhauer,Wagner took the Eastern beliefs seriously,thus so many of Schopenhauers ideas found its way into Tristan,but he did change some of them for his own reasons. For example,Wagner thought that through sexual love,you could deny self and forget the world;Schopenhauer did not mean it in the way Wagner did. At the end of the opera when Tristan and Isolde die,they lose all sense of self,so they have disolved into a timeless unity of all being,this oneness-the cosmic breath,which Wagner has Isolde mentioning in her Liebestod.Day is the physical World,night is the inner world,or the world after death.From the libretto Act 2. TRISTAN:Spiteful day disposed to envy, could devided us with its imposture,but no more delude with its lie!Its idle pomp,its vainglorious show is derided by the man whose sight has been blessed by night.The illusions of Day-renown and reputation,power and profit,so magnificently glittering, disperse like barren particles in the sun before the man who looks with love upon nights death and is familiar with her profound secret. Midst day's barren delusions.TRISTAN,ISOLDE: Oh sink down upon me, night of love,make me forget I am alive,take me up to your bosom,set me free of the world.(It seems to be about sex,but it is a symbol of leaving the world to be at one with all). Wagner was positive about life,he did think human nature was capable of redemption.REFERENCES: Cochrane,P. Tristan und Isolde.1961.Decca. Guinn,J.Stone,L. The St James opera Encyclopedia.1997.Visible Ink. Holden,A. The Penguin Opera Guide.1995.Viking. Magee,B. Wagner and Philosophy.2001.Penguin books. Millington,B. Wagner the Sorcerer of Bayreuth. 2012. Thames and Hudson. Newman,E.Wagner Nights.1977.Pan Books. Watson,D. Richard Wagner,a biography. 1979. J.M Dent and sons.